Doris Drew talking with Helen Long
November 2009 & February 2010
The first recording of Doris Drew talking to Helen Long was recorded in November 2009.
Doris was 92 years old at the time. She lived in Tooting as a child and moved to her present house in Brookview Road in 1939. Doris went to secondary school in Furzedown. Her school was a girls' school in Welham Road which later became Rosa Bassett and is now the Lower School of Graveney School. She later went to the Furzedown Teacher Training College and became the Headteacher of a nursery school in Purley, Surrey.
Click below to listen
| Interview 1 Doris talks to Helen Long |
Interview 2 Doris Drew with Helen Long |
In her second interview, carried out in February 2010, Doris described her childhood in Tooting and Furzedown, her education at what is now Graveney School (then Streatham Secondary School) and Furzedown Teacher Training College and her subsequent career as a teacher. This is a fascinating account of the life of a very bright girl growing up in post First World War Britain, staying on at school to take science ‘Highers’ ( like A levels) and winning a place at teacher-training college, at a time when most school students left school at fourteen years old. From her earliest memory of, aged two, greeting an uncle returning from the world war by running towards him and showing him the lace on her knickers, to her recollections of her Headteacher at Streatham Secondary School, a woman who adopted six children, two of whom were refugees from the Spanish civil war and others who were German Jews fleeing the Nazis, Doris provided a valuable and detailed social history. In April 2010 Doris died, aged 92.
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